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Tuesday, September 25, 2012

The dominant art trend since Impressionism has been towards
what I would term intellectual art. This is art in which

value judgements cannot be
based on the quality of the execution, canons of beauty or taste, or
personal response

art cannot be judged as
good or bad, only as successful or unsuccessful; either in terms of its
marketability as a commodity or in terms of approved ideological positioning
(e.g. promoting community, promoting social inclusion, critiquing sexism
& discrimination)

images become mere
signifiers to be decoded

approved socio-political
issues can be “read” into the work

the art work is to be
interpreted as text

all meanings are equal and
therefore meaningless

the writing about the art
work (by the artists and academicians) becomes more relevant than the work
itself.

This trend in the art world is, as would be expected, a mere
side-stream in the massive flow of change. We are moving inexorably towards a
state in which the physical and social worlds are merely analogues of a
logically consistent virtual world and therefore subject to even greater
control, manipulation and exploitation. Part of this flow is the neutralisation
of human activities (art, religion, psychology, philosophy) which could
challenge this hegemony.

One response to this development has been the emergence of a
counter-culture of what I would term therapeutic art outside the approved
mainstream. This is art whose creed is

there is no right or wrong
way as long as it comes from within the inner self

be authentic,
expressive and spontaneous

don’t concern yourself
with the outcome or the product; it’s the process of creating that is the
important thing.

Christopher Allen, writing about the Australian artist David
Boyd (Review, The Australian September 8-9, 2012), makes a critical point,
which I think should be taken to heart by every intuitive artist. He contrasts
David’s more highly regarded brother, Arthur (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Boyd)
who

...was an almost purely intuitive artist with very little capacity for intellectual analysis or self-criticism, and an often defective level of quality control. But he did possess a poetic mind that expressed itself in subjects that arose from the imagination rather than from any ideological preconception; and he regularly sought renewal in landscape, which forced him to attend to a world outside his own thoughts.

did not apply himself to
looking carefully and patiently at the world, that he did not try to stretch
himself, as Arthur instinctively knew he needed to do, beyond the orbit of his
own inner life.

David Boyd: from the Murrembeena series

I believe that art must be rescued from the dead end of intellectual
art. Art making needs to be revitalised to serve the human spirit —it is
literally a matter of life or death for us all. (see My Art Credo). We need to
restore the intuitive, holistic, relational side of our natures to artmaking,
without, however, wallowing in the self-indulgent excess of art as therapy. As
Christopher Allen points out, there are two aspects to this dance which are
overlooked by the art-as-therapy practitioners: self-critical reflection and looking
long and closely at the world.

In both the contemporary intellectual and therapeutic art
there is a fundamental turning inwards and a turning away from the world as
experienced. In rejecting the inner aspects of human experience, the intellectual
impulse ends in the current reductio ad absurdum, where meaning exists only
within a self-contained virtual system. Such
art lacks the depth arising from human experience. In rejecting the value of
intellectual detachment, the therapeutic impulse ends in art which has depth
and meaning only for the maker. Such art lacks the depth that arises from relationship
between self and other.

In both movements,
there is also a turning away from the craft of artmaking—a rejection, not
merely of technique, but of attaching any importance at all to the manipulation
of materials

Art making requires a sacred relationship between self and
other, which often comes from that long, slow, patient and careful looking at
the world and from wrestling with the materials of artmaking. It is in the
dance between the two aspects of our natures— the intellectual, critical and
manipulative—the intuitive, relational and holistic— that creativity and poetry
flowers.

Sunday, September 2, 2012

My parents were children of the Great Depression and young adults of the Second World War. From them I learned two, possibly contradictory, things about money: Spend like there's no tomorrow (because there may just not be) and waste nothing.

So I'm a profligate hoarder, kept in check (sort of) by common sense, circumstances and a smart wife. Of course, I can be sneaky...I'm not entirely sure that part of the motivation for making bricolage and assemblage might not be I get to hoard lots of lovely junk...er potentially useful art materials.

I also don't like to throw out the leftover oil paint at the end of a session or, like a lot of artists, let the crud build up on the palette.

I use up all the paint in two ways.

Using a palette knife, I scrape, dab and smear the leftover paint onto prepared canvases, boards or oil painting papers. This is great for covering up or partly covering paintings that haven't come together, which is how the Red Mandala set of paintings began.

When this is done, I use turpentine and a rag to clean the palette. I rub the rag over a prepared surface to create an imprimatur for new paintings. Sometimes, I rub back over one of these previously created surface to create a second layer. And sometimes, this comes together as a painting in its own right, or one that just requires a touch or two to bring it out. Like this:

Hope
(Oil on paper, A4, c. 12 x 8 inches)

Perhaps, this may give you some ideas for using up all of your paint, even if your practice is based on acrylics, rather than oil paints. If you have any other ideas, I would love you to share them; please post a comment.